U.S. Cities Comparison
To help me decide where to relocate to, I created a spreadsheet summarizing some of the vital statistics of various cities under consideration in the U.S. The spreadsheet is here, with cities arranged in order of decreasing preference:
https://felixwong.com/world/us_cities_comparison.xls
All of these cities were visited in my Great American Road Trip of 2005.
10/1: Added Ashland & Medford. I have now visited every single city that was on my list, concluding the Great American Western Road Trip! A recap of the GAWRT will be coming soon. Right now I am revisiting Bend, which is still on top of the rankings! Also added property tax data for each locale. With the exception of Portland, property tax rates are low in the west (especially CO and UT), and much higher in the eastern and southern U.S.
10/14: Final amendment: Note that the spreadsheet gives my subjective rankings regardless of cost of living, so it’s not just a simple matter for me to pick the top-ranked city as the place I will move to. And in truth, I would be happy to live in any of the top 7!
Some people have asked why I am moving from Fremont. Reasons primarily include cost of living and wanting to be closer to the mountains for rock climbing and skiing. Secondary issues include Bay Area traffic and lack of a sense of community. All that said, I am proud of the All-America City of Fremont and will be the first to say that it is a great place to live.
There are 2 comments.
I found your searches very interesting. Particularly because I live in Twin Falls, ID. Your ranking of our little towns are pretty bad. You seem to think there are only large people in this area? Beg to differ-there are some very beautiful people here too. I quess it's just want you are use too. I have lived here all my life and also lived away from out little city for years as well. Nothing feels as good as driving toward your hometown after you have been gone. Maybe you should settle where you were born. Besides-home is simply where you make it and happiness comes from within.
I appreciate Connie's comments and she makes some good points about "home." Happiness does truly come from within and I am not moving due to being unhappy with Fremont. In fact, some of the best & happiest years of my life have been there. Rather, right now I have the opportunity to live virtually anywhere so why not live in a place most ideal for myself? For clarification, the low rankings of the Idaho cities has more to do with the dry barren desert environment than the people. I agree there are beautiful people in Idaho and did not claim that there are only large people in Boise, Pocatello, and Idaho Falls. For now I only make that claim about Spokane, WA. :) Also for the record I was born in Southern California, which I have virtually no memories of and am not considering at this time due to cost of living.